Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Beer Dinner's

A good food and beer article in the Dallas Morning News today, documenting the trend of having beer dinners. While this has been going on for quite some time on the East and West coast it has taken its sweet time making its way to the central part of the country. From the article it looks like Dallas is getting in on the trend and some restaurants are setting up some really fine beer and food pairings. One question: What about Houston? I know Saint Arnold's does some really good beer and cheese pairings with Houston's own The Dairy Maids, but I only know of one recent beer and food dinner and that was Beaver's and Real Ale, and that was months ago and not on a regular basis. Most of the Texas Breweries are in South Texas (Austin, Blanco, Houston, Conroe) not to far from Houston, why can't a Houston Restaurant step up and do a series of dinners based on beer (whether from Texas or not), but not just one, how about a monthly one, just as many restaurants do a big monthly or even weekly wine pairing menu? There's more to food and beer than just pub grub, why not show case that?
Ok enough with the rant, but go checkout the article.

3 comments:

assurbanipaul said...

I think the bigger question is where is the beer culture? Beer pairing dinners are common in DFW.

Houston is the fourth largest city in the US but it lags behind smaller Texas cities in breweries and brewpubs. It should have a dozen brewpubs and at least five micros, with beer dinners happening weekly.

Why not?

Barleyvine said...

Assurbanipaul,
Its a good question and one I continue to struggle to come up with a satisfactory answer. Here's what I do know. Places like Flying Saucer, Gingerman's, Stag's head and many others that sell craft beer do a booming business in Houston. Mediocre chain brew pubs like BJ's seem to be doing well too. Also Houston is home to some of the best restaurants in the country, places like Reef, Textile, Raindbow Lodge, Bedford, T'afia's, etc. So we have places that serve good food, and places that serve good beer why not both? I know brewpubs have come and gone from Houston, but that was over a decade ago and Houston is a different city with different tastes, so why not give it another go? I try to talk to anyone I know in the restaurant busines (which admittedly is not many) that something like this could work in Houston, hopefully some day I'll be proven right.

Craig said...

I understand that Bistro 829 in Katy, well known for its wine dinners, had a couple of beer dinners late last year. One of them supposedly featured Samuel Adams beers. I have not heard of any beer dinners being offered so far in 2009. My concern is that these beer dinners may have only been promoted via their normal channels (emails) used to announce their wine dinners, and thus may not have been well promoted well within the Houston beer community (via blogs such as this and by other means). I have been meaning to follow-up and see of more beer dinners are planned, but as of yet I have not done so.